This is my very first post on the Kazenshuu forum after quite some time lurking. It's good to finally be able to take part. What I want to address in this topic is how Dragon Ball has helped individuals cope with the real stresses of every day life. For me, this started in my childhood. I was born in 1988, and my first exposure to Dragon Ball was via brief broadcasts on morning cartoon slots. This is prior to the Ocean Dub airing on Toonami. I recall thinking that it was exotic compared to the cartoons I had been exposed to up to that point. This was short lived, as I remember seeking this new and exotic curiosity out, but never finding a consistent time or channel to find it.
Fast forward several years. I'm an awkward, chubby kid with no athletic skills. To make matters worse, I probably have some kind of learning disability, as I always had trouble keeping decent grades. I believe it was the summer following the end of 5th grade... Dragon Ball Z began airing regularly on Toonami, and it was incredible. I finally found that fleeting, exotic cartoon that enthralled me as a younger child. Toonami had a certain way of making DBZ appear particularly cool in the bumpers... In any case, I found this fantastic new world to immerse myself in. No longer did I have to worry about school bullies, having trouble with homework but being afraid to articulate my difficulties to my parents or teachers, or the impending consequences of poor grades. It was summer, and I was going on adventure. Man, Goku and Piccolo were so cool... I tried to emulate them in every way that I could. I remember thinking that maybe the cool kids would share a common interest in this new cartoon.
So after a summer of enjoying Dragon Ball Z, utterly obsessed, I went back to school. It was completely apparent that Dragon Ball Z was a well known show, but like with most Japanese offerings, you probably wanted to keep that interest to yourself, unless you wanted to be picked on for your dweebiness. I remember letting it slip that I loved DBZ a few times, hoping someone would throw me a line, but alas, this would never happen. In fact, I recall being laughed at by most, even by people that I knew secretly enjoyed the show but were embarrassed. One of my more embarrassing moments was my first schoolyard fight... I told a kid that was taunting me no to "underestimate me", and I was frequently misquoted as having said something like "never underestimate my full power!". I was taunted and bullied relentlessly over this, even after the fight.
So the fight was set for Friday of that week. I remember dreaming of how to pull of some of the moves I had seen in my beloved series. How to emulate the blocks, and parries. I know, and knew at the time, 99.99% of everything was impossible, but I had in my mind a few blows that were doable that I was going to use to smite my foe. Friday comes, and I took an utter beating. All the while, I was taunted about my "underestimated power", which hit particularly hard after the fight was over. I was devastated, and physically injured. I remember going home, and my dad was disappointed, probably more so because I lost.
From this point forward, I became rather withdrawn, enjoying more than ever my time with Goku and friends. I even spent time roleplaying on AOL chatrooms. For the next few years, Goku and friends were my escape. My social life was non existent, and I had a pretty terrible home life to boot. My family lost everything in a flood, and we had to do without Christmas. But I was OK. I remember getting myself some burned VCDs with a fansub of Dragon Ball, incredibly excited to see the events that occurred prior to DBZ (I got them by trading SNES games I wasn't playing anymore via a website called GameTradingZone). By the summer, things got better and I remember thoroughly enjoying the Garlic Jr saga, dying to know what happened to Goku on planet Namek. So began my 7th grade year, where I was able to reinvent myself in a lot of ways, create a social life for myself, and even became friends with some of my former tormentors.
Long before Facebook, the closest thing we had was a free Homestead page. I remember finding gifs of sprites from Super Famicom games of Goku and Vegeta unleashing huge ki blasts. I would upload them on my page facing off, as if they were battling. I had that up for my geek friends. I also had an incredibly popular polling page that had a midi of Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku. Some of my pent up anger went into these polls... I'm not proud of this, but I recall having this girl with a lisp and terrible acne openly stating how she had a crush on me... So deflect, I put up a poll asking "who is the ugliest girl in our grade cluster", listing her as not just the only choice, but every choice. This made it around my computer class pretty quickly, and here's where it relates to Dragon Ball... I was playing my copy of Dragon Ball Z: Super Goku Den — Totsugeki-Hen when my dad burst in my room, enraged, due to a phone call he had received from this poor girl's father.
With each passing year, my interest in Dragon Ball weens, and my interest in sex, drugs, and rock n roll becomes more my focal point. I wound up dropping out of school, getting my GED, and going to work. I found myself in more and more trouble every year, up until things came to a head when I got arrested in Boston. Without going into detail, I found myself in trouble with the law, and the minimum sentence would have been 7 years in prison. I was only 17 years old... Now, I won't go as far as to say I was totally innocent, but I did not commit the crime I was charged with, I was merely present when someone else committed this crime, and therefore guilty by association. I spent some time in big boy county jail for a while. Eventually, all charges were dropped, and I calmed way down. I definitely didn't want to spend my life in jail.
A few years later, I moved in with my girlfriend, and we had a child together. I still had some old habits related to drinking and drugging. These aspects of my life spun out of control, and I drove my girlfriend away. She took my daughter and left the state. I took this as something of a wake-up call, but I only toned down my dumbassery. I fell in love again, and had a second daughter, but the old cycles started to repeat. I find myself in and out of rehabs until I finally said enough is enough. So how does this relate to Dragon Ball? Well, ever since I've cleaned up my act, I've fell in love with the series again. I never watched Dragon Ball/Z from start to finish, and I never read the manga. I forgot how much joy this world brought me, and I'm now starting to find my genuine interests again. Me and my younger daughter get to watch Dragon Ball together and bond over it (she loves Pu'ar, and we watch the censored version together FYI). I've finally gotten back to my roots, and a major part of that is my love of this series. I've replaced my lifestyle things that make me genuinely happy. A couple years ago, I never would have spent money on something like a Vizbig volume, that money would have been better spent on drugs. But now, rediscovering this series has invigorated me in so many ways. I feel like a normal human with normal interests again. And I'm lucky enough to be alive to pass this joy on to my children.
I'm sorry for the long, rambling, gushing nature of my post, but I'm sure that I'm not the only one that has DB touch them in such a tremendous way. More importantly, I want to point out how much this community has touched me over the years, through some of my worst times. I'm happy to now be a part of it. Thanks for reading
anytime you need to talk to someone pm me! 
